talking about computers and design
by Ralph Grabowski

Nov 25, 2012

ZWCAD+ 2012 vs AutoCAD 2013

ZWSOFT has been over the last decade working diligently to
produce a respectable AutoCAD workalike. Like many other reasonably-priced CAD
packages, ZWCAD was for a time based on IntelliCAD, but then the company
rewrote the code to make it faster. And so in 2012 they delivered ZWCAD+ 2012--
the '+' indicating the new code base.

All along, ZWSOFT emphasized ZWCAD's compatibility with
AutoCAD -- the subject of this article. But it is not their only CAD system.
The company made in 2010 the surprising move of purchasing VX of Florida, USA,
a firm best known for its CAM (computer-aided manufacturing) software. ZWSOFT
renamed VX "ZW3D," and then put it through an aggressive upgrade
schedule. More recently, the company release ZWCAD Mechanical, an add-on for
doing 2D mechanical design. Today, its line of CAD software is sold by dealers
in 80 countries to 320,000 customers.

About ZWCAD+

ZWCAD+ is a cost-effective AutoCAD workalike. When AutoCAD
users fire up ZWCAD, they will find it similar to that with which they are
already familiar. (See figure 1.) Indeed, ZWSOFT claims their software
"has the closest user experience as AutoCAD, compared to alternative
products." Let's take a look at how ZWCAD+ compares with AutoCAD in the
areas of user interface, commands, drawing display, and customization.

(Because Autodesk uses the year+1 method for release
numbers, the current version of AutoCAD is 2013 even though the current release
of ZWCAD+ is 2012.)

ZWCAD+ does come with toolbars, but they appeared when only
I switched to Classic mode, which replaces the ribbon with the menu bar. I
found that menus are always available in ribbon mode by clicking the Menu
button in the upper right corner. While ZWCAD+ does not have
workspaces, clicking the adjacent button lets me switch skin colors.

My favorite feature is the "document head," those
tabs that let me switch instantly between open drawings. Right-clicking one of
these tabs presents a menu of common file-oriented commands. See figure 3. (In
contrast, AutoCAD has awkward drawing switching systems involving toolbar
buttons or the application menu.) The Ctrl+Tab keyboard shortcut works in both
CAD systems.

One curiosity is that to switch between the ribbon and menu
bar (aka the "Classic" interface), I have to restart ZWCAD+. In
AutoCAD I need only enter a system variable to toggle the menu bar on and off.
After I activated Classic mode, I found the menu bar to be very similar to that
of AutoCAD, the only differences being those that relate to ZWCAD+'s extra and
missing commands.

Power users tend to as much as possible employ the keyboard
to enter commands and options, and here ZWCAD+ matches AutoCAD in command bar
functions. It has command history, and so I can press the up arrow to recall
earlier commands. When I start to type a command name, ZWCAD+ presents a list
of similar names. There is, however, no dynamic input; for me, that's fine,
because I don't like it in AutoCAD.

Among palettes, there is Tools, Design Center, and
Properties; of other palettes found in AutoCAD, you can use dialog boxes for
accessing layers, external references, and so on. There is no block editor
environment, nor are there the related dynamic blocks.

ZWCAD+ takes the user interface lead over AutoCAD with
something it calls SmartMouse: by holding down the right mouse button and
dragging the cursor in the shape of a letter of the alphabet (or in a specific
directions), I activate a command. For instance, when I drag the mouse to draw the
letter E, the Erase command starts; I drag to the left, and Copy starts. Best of all, the SmartMouseConfig command fully customizes any of the
movements.

Command Compatibility

ZWCAD+'s commands, express tools, and system variables use
AutoCAD names. All of ZWCAD+ commands are identically named to those in
AutoCAD, except for those that are unique to ZWCAD+. I didn't do a thorough
check of which commands are included, except to note that there are over 500 of
them in ZWCAD+ -- as compared to around 1,200 in AutoCAD. Once you leave out
the AutoCAD commands dedicated to 3D, the numbers compare more favorably. (It
can be hard to decide precisely which should be included in AutoCAD, because it
has many duplicate and undocumented commands).

ZWCAD+ supports command aliases; you edit them through the zwcad.pgp
file in Notepad. I do wish ZWSOFT would include more workalike aliases, such as
having an 'externalreferences' alias for the Xref Manager dialog box.

The ACIS modeler is part of ZWCAD+, and so I am able to
create and edit 3D solid models. Hidden line removal and shading of 3D drawings
are included, but not rendering.

Drawing Compatibility

ZWCAD+ reads AutoCAD drawings made by releases as recent as 2012.

I sometimes consult on compatibility for competitors to
Autodesk, and from this I have a collection of tough drawing with which test
DWG files. Here ZWCAD+ scored excellent, displaying every test drawing
correctly. Now, this is largely due to the diligence of the Open Design
Alliance, from whom ZWSOFT licenses its DWG read-write capabilities.

So the question becomes, "What happens when I import an
AutoCAD drawing that contains entities not supported by ZWCAD+?" For
instance, it does not do constraints or point clouds. Well, the full answer
involves a lot of detailed, time-consuming investigation for which I charge
clients thousands. But for this article I opened an AutoCAD drawing containing
a point cloud; ZWCAD+ displayed it correctly, with the Properties palette
reporting it as a "proxy entity." This means that I perform simple
editing tasks on it, such as move or delete it, change its color or layer, and
print it; being a proxy, I cannot edit it with command specific to point
clouds.

When I opened a drawing containing xrefs that
could not be found, ZWCAD+ reported them as such, but unhappily gave me no
opportunity to find them on its behalf. An icon in the lower-right
corner shows that xref files are attached; it also warns when they are lost. On
the positive side, however, ZWCAD+ places drawings, raster images, OLE objects,
and WMF hybrid images into drawings.

Customization Compatibility

In terms of user interface customization, most of this is
done through the Customize command, and not the CUI command. This
command works simply, the way I liked it in old releases of AutoCAD, before
Autodesk switched to the overly complex CUI command.

To add and remove buttons from toolbars, for instance, I
need only drag them from and to the Customize dialog box; the same goes for
customizing Tools palettes. As for menus, well, I think we are stuck
customizing them old-style, by editing the source MNU file.

This dialog box also handles the creation and editing of
keyboard shortcuts, like pressing Ctrl+N to execute the New command. You cannot
add "commands" through macros, as in AutoCAD; also not customizable
is the ribbon.

The Options command lets you tweak user interface elements
through a tabbed dialog box that looks like the one in AutoCAD,
through with fewer options, which may well be a good thing as AutoCAD's become
more overwhelming over time. This dialog box lets you customize the action of
right-clicks, interface and selection colors, smart snap settings, and more.

The Drawing Settings dialog box in ZWCAD+ is not as
comprehensive as AutoCAD's; nevertheless, it lets you choose options related to
object snaps, snaps and grids, and polar tracking -- all crucial for creating
accurate drawings.

When it comes to programming, ZWCAD+ handles LISP, DCL,
Diesel, COM, and script files. It does not support .Net or DVB, and it
lacks the VLISP integrated development environment. It has its own version of
ARX called ZRX, and it has its own SDS (not the one from IntelliCAD), which is
compatible with ADS. ZWCAD+ supports VBA through its own ZPVB format. LISP
routines can be encrypted, something no available in AutoCAD; this protects the
source code from being stolen.

ZWCAD+ Bonuses

In addition to encrypted LISP, SmartMouse, and drawing tabs,
ZWCAD+ includes FCMP, the awkwardly-named command that displays the differences
between two drawings. It's short for "File CoMPare" and is found in
the Express Tools section.

Not only does it illustrate differences through colors, I
can use it to discover differences that are not obvious from the geometry, such
as properties.

Summary

There is much more to ZWCAD+ that I did not have the room to
write about in this review, such as viewing and editing commands, dimensions,
and the full range of AutoCAD-compatible plotting controls – ZWCAD+ supports
eTransmit, plot stamps, plotter configurations, batch plotting, publishing of
drawing sets, and outputting drawings in PDF, DWG, and raster formats.

While AutoCAD costs $4,000, ZWCAD+ Pro is priced at around
$1,000, depending on which country you buy in. ZWCAD+ costs a quarter of
AutoCAD, which means your office can run CAD on 4X more stations, which is
pretty cost-effective.